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Gary Edwards

The Omnigoogle | Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog - 0 views

www.roughtype.com/...google_at_10.php

chrome google microsoft webkit

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Sep 08 - Cached
  • It’s this natural drive to reduce the cost of complements that, more than anything else, explains Google’s strategy. Nearly everything the company does, including building big data centers, buying optical fiber, promoting free Wi-Fi access, fighting copyright restrictions, supporting open source software, launching browsers and satellites, and giving away all sorts of Web services and data, is aimed at reducing the cost and expanding the scope of Internet use. Google wants information to be free because as the cost of information falls it makes more money.
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Sep 08
     
    Nick Carr gives us an insight into the future of the Web from the perspecive of Google's business model. No doubt the Chrome "omnibar" is revolutionary in th esimple way it leverages Google search and index services to extend web surfers experience. Truly great stuff tha tNick ties back into the basic business model of Google. What Nick doesn't cover is how Chorme is desinged to bridge that gap between Web surfing and next generation Web Applications (RiA). Microsoft is in position to dominate this next generation, while Chrome represents Google's first step into the fray. Sure, Google dominates consumer applets and services, but RiA represents a model for enterprise and corporate business systems moving their core to the Web. It's a big shift. And Google has some serious catching up to do.
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Sep 08
     
    It's this natural drive to reduce the cost of complements that, more than anything else, explains Google's strategy. Nearly everything the company does, including building big data centers, buying optical fiber, promoting free Wi-Fi access, fighting copyright restrictions, supporting open source software, launching browsers and satellites, and giving away all sorts of Web services and data, is aimed at reducing the cost and expanding the scope of Internet use. Google wants information to be free because as the cost of information falls it makes more money.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

La industria cultural y el coste de oportunidad - 1 views

www.blogoff.es/...ural-y-el-coste-de-oportunidad

coste de oportunidad coste oportunidad industria cultural cultura industria tecnología

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 11 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 11 Mar 12
     
    [... El coste de oportunidad de algo es aquello a lo que se renuncia por conseguirlo. Así de simple. Aunque si realmente fuera así de simple, esta definición no separaría a los genios de lo que no son y evidentemente en la industria cultural la genialidad brilla por su ausencia. ...]
Gary Edwards

The True Story of How the Patent Bar Captured a Court and Shrank the Intellectual Commo... - 1 views

www.cato-unbound.org/...rt-shrank-intellectual-commons

patents software-patents

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The change in the law wrought by the Federal Circuit can also be viewed substantively through the controversy over software patents. Throughout the 1960s, the USPTO refused to award patents for software innovations. However, several of the USPTO’s decisions were overruled by the patent-friendly U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, which ordered that software patents be granted. In Gottschalk v. Benson (1972) and Parker v. Flook (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, holding that mathematical algorithms (and therefore software) were not patentable subject matter. In 1981, in Diamond v. Diehr, the Supreme Court upheld a software patent on the grounds that the patent in question involved a physical process—the patent was issued for software used in the molding of rubber. While affirming their prior ruling that mathematical formulas are not patentable in the abstract, the Court held that an otherwise patentable invention did not become unpatentable simply because it utilized a computer.
  • In the hands of the newly established Federal Circuit, however, this small scope for software patents in precedent was sufficient to open the floodgates. In a series of decisions culminating in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group (1998), the Federal Circuit broadened the criteria for patentability of software and business methods substantially, allowing protection as long as the innovation “produces a useful, concrete and tangible result.” That broadened criteria led to an explosion of low-quality software patents, from Amazon’s 1-Click checkout system to Twitter’s pull-to-refresh feature on smartphones. The GAO estimates that more than half of all patents granted in recent years are software-related. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues to hold, as in Parker v. Flook, that computer software algorithms are not patentable, and has begun to push back against the Federal Circuit. In Bilski v. Kappos (2010), the Supreme Court once again held that abstract ideas are not patentable, and in Alice v. CLS (2014), it ruled that simply applying an abstract idea on a computer does not suffice to make the idea patent-eligible. It still is not clear what portion of existing software patents Alice invalidates, but it could be a significant one.
  • Supreme Court justices also recognize the Federal Circuit’s insubordination. In oral arguments in Carlsbad Technology v. HIF Bio (2009), Chief Justice John Roberts joked openly about it:
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The Opportunity of the Commons
  • As a result of the Federal Circuit’s pro-patent jurisprudence, our economy has been flooded with patents that would otherwise not have been granted. If more patents meant more innovation, then we would now be witnessing a spectacular economic boom. Instead, we have been living through what Tyler Cowen has called a Great Stagnation. The fact that patents have increased while growth has not is known in the literature as the “patent puzzle.” As Michele Boldrin and David Levine put it, “there is no empirical evidence that [patents] serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded—which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity.”
  • While more patents have not resulted in faster economic growth, they have resulted in more patent lawsuits.
  • Software patents have characteristics that make them particularly susceptible to litigation. Unlike, say, chemical patents, software patents are plagued by a problem of description. How does one describe a software innovation in such a way that anyone searching for it will easily find it? As Christina Mulligan and Tim Lee demonstrate, chemical formulas are indexable, meaning that as the number of chemical patents grow, it will still be easy to determine if a molecule has been patented. Since software innovations are not indexable, they estimate that “patent clearance by all firms would require many times more hours of legal research than all patent lawyers in the United States can bill in a year. The result has been an explosion of patent litigation.” Software and business method patents, estimate James Bessen and Michael Meurer, are 2 and 7 times more likely to be litigated than other patents, respectively (4 and 13 times more likely than chemical patents).
  • Software patents make excellent material for predatory litigation brought by what are often called “patent trolls.”
  • Trolls use asymmetries in the rules of litigation to legally extort millions of dollars from innocent parties. For example, one patent troll, Innovatio IP Ventures, LLP, acquired patents that implicated Wi-Fi. In 2011, it started sending demand letters to coffee shops and hotels that offered wireless Internet access, offering to settle for $2,500 per location. This amount was far in excess of the 9.56 cents per device that Innovatio was entitled to under the “Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory” licensing promises attached to their portfolio, but it was also much less than the cost of trial, and therefore it was rational for firms to pay. Cisco stepped in and spent $13 million in legal fees on the case, and settled on behalf of their customers for 3.2 cents per device. Other manufacturers had already licensed Innovatio’s portfolio, but that didn’t stop their customers from being targeted by demand letters.
  • Litigation cost asymmetries are magnified by the fact that most patent trolls are nonpracticing entities. This means that when patent infringement trials get to the discovery phase, they will cost the troll very little—a firm that does not operate a business has very few records to produce.
  • But discovery can cost a medium or large company millions of dollars. Using an event study methodology, James Bessen and coauthors find that infringement lawsuits by nonpracticing entities cost publicly traded companies $83 billion per year in stock market capitalization, while plaintiffs gain less than 10 percent of that amount.
  • Software patents also reduce innovation in virtue of their cumulative nature and the fact that many of them are frequently inputs into a single product. Law professor Michael Heller coined the phrase “tragedy of the anticommons” to refer to a situation that mirrors the well-understood “tragedy of the commons.” Whereas in a commons, multiple parties have the right to use a resource but not to exclude others, in an anticommons, multiple parties have the right to exclude others, and no one is therefore able to make effective use of the resource. The tragedy of the commons results in overuse of the resource; the tragedy of the anticommons results in underuse.
  • In order to cope with the tragedy of the anticommons, we should carefully investigate the opportunity of  the commons. The late Nobelist Elinor Ostrom made a career of studying how communities manage shared resources without property rights. With appropriate self-governance institutions, Ostrom found again and again that a commons does not inevitably lead to tragedy—indeed, open access to shared resources can provide collective benefits that are not available under other forms of property management.
  • This suggests that—litigation costs aside—patent law could be reducing the stock of ideas rather than expanding it at current margins.
  • Advocates of extensive patent protection frequently treat the commons as a kind of wasteland. But considering the problems in our patent system, it is worth looking again at the role of well-tailored limits to property rights in some contexts. Just as we all benefit from real property rights that no longer extend to the highest heavens, we would also benefit if the scope of patent protection were more narrowly drawn.
  • Reforming the Patent System
  • This analysis raises some obvious possibilities for reforming the patent system. Diane Wood, Chief Judge of the 7th Circuit, has proposed ending the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals—instead, the Federal Circuit could share jurisdiction with the other circuit courts. While this is a constructive suggestion, it still leaves the door open to the Federal Circuit playing “a leading role in shaping patent law,” which is the reason for its capture by patent interests. It would be better instead simply to abolish the Federal Circuit and return to the pre-1982 system, in which patents received no special treatment in appeals. This leaves open the possibility of circuit splits, which the creation of the Federal Circuit was designed to mitigate, but there are worse problems than circuit splits, and we now have them.
  • Another helpful reform would be for Congress to limit the scope of patentable subject matter via statute. New Zealand has done just that, declaring that software is “not an invention” to get around WTO obligations to respect intellectual property. Congress should do the same with respect to both software and business methods.
  • Finally, even if the above reforms were adopted, there would still be a need to address the asymmetries in patent litigation that result in predatory “troll” lawsuits. While the holding in Alice v. CLS arguably makes a wide swath of patents invalid, those patents could still be used in troll lawsuits because a ruling of invalidity for each individual patent might not occur until late in a trial. Current legislation in Congress addresses this class of problem by mandating disclosures, shifting fees in the case of spurious lawsuits, and enabling a review of the patent’s validity before a trial commences.
  • What matters for prosperity is not just property rights in the abstract, but good property-defining institutions. Without reform, our patent system will continue to favor special interests and forestall economic growth.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Sep 14
     
    "Libertarians intuitively understand the case for patents: just as other property rights internalize the social benefits of improvements to land, automobile maintenance, or business investment, patents incentivize the creation of new inventions, which might otherwise be undersupplied. So far, so good. But it is important to recognize that the laws that govern property, intellectual or otherwise, do not arise out of thin air. Rather, our political institutions, with all their virtues and foibles, determine the contours of property-the exact bundle of rights that property holders possess, their extent, and their limitations. Outlining efficient property laws is not a trivial problem. The optimal contours of property are neither immutable nor knowable a priori. For example, in 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the age-old common law doctrine that extended real property rights to the heavens without limit. The advent of air travel made such extensive property rights no longer practicable-airlines would have had to cobble together a patchwork of easements, acre by acre, for every corridor through which they flew, and they would have opened themselves up to lawsuits every time their planes deviated from the expected path. The Court rightly abridged property rights in light of these empirical realities. In defining the limits of patent rights, our political institutions have gotten an analogous question badly wrong. A single, politically captured circuit court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals has consistently expanded the scope of patentable subject matter. This expansion has resulted in an explosion of both patents and patent litigation, with destructive consequences. "
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Sep 14
     
    I added a comment to the page's article. Patents are antithetical to the precepts of Libertarianism and do not involve Natural Law rights. But I agree with the author that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should be abolished. It's a failed experiment.
Paul Merrell

An Important Kindle request - 0 views

www.readersunited.com

ebooks Amazon Hachette price-war

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • A Message from the Amazon Books Team Dear Readers, Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents — it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year. With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution — places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if "publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them." Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion. Well… history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
  • Fast forward to today, and it's the e-book's turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette — a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate — are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there's no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market — e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive. Perhaps channeling Orwell's decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn't only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette's readers. The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will "devalue books" and hurt "Arts and Letters." They're wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Microsoft cobra por ceder información al FBI - 2 views

www.muycomputer.com/...microsoft-cobra-fbi

microsoft cobra información fbi

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 23 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 23 Mar 14
     
    " Sí, el gigante de Redmond hace caja cada vez que facilita información al FBI, algo que han confirmado desde la propia Microsoft, diciendo que las leyes estadounidenses permiten a las empresas el reembolso de los costes asociados al cumplimiento de órdenes legales que, en este caso, tienen por objeto la obtención de datos de clientes. Esto quiere decir que sí, efectivamente, Microsoft cobra, pero no en sentido estricto, ya de lo expuesto se deduce que sólo suple los costes de cumplir esas órdenes y ceder información al FBI, algo que a pesar de todo ha generado una cierta y comprensible controversia. Microsoft cobra por ceder información al FBI En teoría el coste por cada petición va desde los 50 hasta los 200 dólares, pero se realizan de forma muy frecuente y normalmente en grandes cantidades, lo que da lugar a facturas tan abultadas como la de la imagen que acompaña la noticia, que asciende a nada menos que 352.200 dólares. Categorías: Actualidad, Microsoft, Noticias Etiquetas: cobra, Datos, FBI, información, Microsoft, Seguridad, Tecnología « Anterior: Moto 360 tendrá pantalla OLED, carga inalámbrica y cristal de zafiro Siguiente: Microsoft ofrece descuentos de 100 dólares por abandonar Windows XP » Análisis Nokia Lumia 1320, análisis Nokia Lumia 1320, análisis Tras analizar el Nokia Lumia 1520, el phablet tope de gama de Nokia, ahora llega... Panasonic Lumix TZ60, análisis Panasonic Lumix TZ60, análisis No son tiempos fáciles para las compactas; el fenómeno smartphone,... FRITZ!Box 7490, análisis FRITZ!Box 7490, análisis Tras una primera toma de contacto con FRITZ!Box 7490, el... Monitor Philips 231C5, análisis Monitor Philips 231C5, análisis Philips 231C5 es un nuevo monitor táctil que destaca por... Más Análisis... MuyTV Smartwatch Motorola Moto 360 Nuevo WhatsApp Windows Phone Thumbnail Nuevo WhatsApp Windows Phone Tras la actualización del WhatsApp para Android, los responsables de... PC contra Xbox One en Ti
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Estimating the Total Development Cost of Linux Foundation's Collaborative Projects - 0 views

www.linuxfoundation.org/...ndation-collaborative-projects

estimating development cost linux foundation collaborative projects

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 30 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 30 Sep 15
     
    "In the past ten years, open source has taken over the software industry. As the speed and requirements of innovation are changing, technology companies have realized that to keep pace and be cost effective they must leverage external R&D in the form of open source projects."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

The hidden cost of EU trade deals | Friends of the Earth Europe - 0 views

www.foeeurope.org/hidden-cost-eu-trade-deals

hidden cost EU trade deals europe friends earth warning corporations sovereignty

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Dec 14
     
    "This report compiles all publicly available data on investor-state dispute settlement cases taken against EU member states since 1994. It highlights the irrefutable attack on recent EU accession countries and the environment, as well as the cost this system has already had on EU taxpayers and European democracy."
Paul Merrell

ISPs say the "massive cost" of Snooper's Charter will push up UK broadband bills | Ars ... - 0 views

arstechnica.co.uk/...ill-push-up-uk-broadband-bills

surveillance state UK ISPs cost Snooper's-Charter

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • How much extra will you have to pay for the privilege of being spied on?
  • UK ISPs have warned MPs that the costs of implementing the Investigatory Powers Bill (aka the Snooper's Charter) will be much greater than the £175 million the UK government has allotted for the task, and that broadband bills will need to rise as a result. Representatives from ISPs and software companies told the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that the legislation greatly underestimates the "sheer quantity" of data generated by Internet users these days. They also pointed out that distinguishing content from metadata is a far harder task than the government seems to assume. Matthew Hare, the chief executive of ISP Gigaclear, said with "a typical 1 gigabit connection to someone's home, over 50 terabytes of data per year [are] passing over it. If you say that a proportion of that is going to be the communications data—the record of who you communicate with, when you communicate or what you communicate—there would be the most massive and enormous amount of data that in future an access provider would be expected to keep. The indiscriminate collection of mass data across effectively every user of the Internet in this country is going to have a massive cost."
  • Moreover, the larger the cache of stored data, the more worthwhile it will be for criminals and state-backed actors to gain access and download that highly-revealing personal information for fraud and blackmail. John Shaw, the vice president of product management at British security firm Sophos, told the MPs: "There would be a huge amount of very sensitive personal data that could be used by bad guys.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The ISPs also challenged the government's breezy assumption that separating the data from the (equally revealing) metadata would be simple, not least because an Internet connection is typically being used for multiple services simultaneously, with data packets mixed together in a completely contingent way. Hare described a typical usage scenario for a teenager on their computer at home, where they are playing a game communicating with their friends using Steam; they are broadcasting the game using Twitch; and they may also be making a voice call at the same time too. "All those applications are running simultaneously," Hare said. "They are different applications using different servers with different services and different protocols. They are all running concurrently on that one machine." Even accessing a Web page is much more complicated than the government seems to believe, Hare pointed out. "As a webpage is loading, you will see that that webpage is made up of tens, or many tens, of individual sessions that have been created across the Internet just to load a single webpage. Bluntly, if you want to find out what someone is doing you need to be tracking all of that data all the time."
  • Hare raised another major issue. "If I was a software business ... I would be very worried that my customers would not buy my software any more if it had anything to do with security at all. I would be worried that a backdoor was built into the software by the [Investigatory Powers] Bill that would allow the UK government to find out what information was on that system at any point they wanted in the future." As Ars reported last week, the ability to demand that backdoors are added to systems, and a legal requirement not to reveal that fact under any circumstances, are two of the most contentious aspects of the new Investigatory Powers Bill. The latest comments from industry experts add to concerns that the latest version of the Snooper's Charter would inflict great harm on civil liberties in the UK, and also make security research well-nigh impossible here. To those fears can now be added undermining the UK software industry, as well as forcing the UK public to pay for the privilege of having their ISP carry out suspicionless surveillance.
Paul Merrell

Study: Surveillance will cost US tech sector more than $35B by 2016 | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...s-tech-sector-over-35b-by-2016

surveillance state NSA-blowback U.S.-tech-cos

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • A new study says that the U.S. tech industry is likely to lose more than $35 billion from foreign customers by 2016 because of concerns over government surveillance.“In short, foreign customers are shunning U.S. companies,” the authors of a new study from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation write.ADVERTISEMENT“The U.S. government’s failure to reform many of the NSA’s surveillance programs has damaged the competitiveness of the U.S. tech sector and cost it a portion of the global market share,” they said.The think tank’s report found that the cost to the tech sector associated with ongoing concerns over surveillance programs run out of the U.S. was likely to “far exceed” $35 billion by 2016, an earlier estimate set by the group.
  • The group said that lawmakers must enact additional reforms to surveillance policy if they wish to help the tech sector regain the trust of foreign customers. That includes opposing “backdoors,” which allow law enforcement to access otherwise encrypted data, and signing off on trade agreements, including the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, that “ban digital protectionism.”The study’s authors found that the revelations about broad U.S. surveillance programs acted as a justification for foreign policymakers to enact protectionist policies aimed at aiding their own domestic technology sectors.Foreign companies have also used the information about U.S. surveillance programs to their advantage.“Some European companies have begun to highlight where their digital services are hosted as an alternative to U.S. companies,” the authors write.
  • American companies, they found, have lost contracts to foreign competitors over fears about mass surveillance.Earlier this month, President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, a bill that reformed the three Patriot Act provisions that authorized the bulk, warrantless collection of Americans’ phone records. The bill was widely supported by technology companies, including giants like Apple and Google.
Gary Edwards

ongoing · What's "Cloud Interop"? - 0 views

www.tbray.org/...What-Does-Interop-Mean

Cloud-Computing interop

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Feb 09
     
    The question that seems more important than all the rest is "Can I afford to switch vendors?" Let's consider some examples. When printers wear out, you can buy new printers from whoever with little concern for switching cost. If you're unhappy with your current servers, you can replace them with models from lots of vendors (Sun, Dell, HP, IBM, others) without worrying too much about compatibility (well, you may have some racking and cabling pain); the issues are price, performance, and support. If you're grouchy about your OS, you can move between *n*x flavors like Debian, SUSE, and Solaris pretty freely in most (granted, not all) cases; with maybe some deployment and sysadmin pain. If you're unhappy with your desktop environment, well too bad, you're stuck. Your users are too deeply bought into some combination of Outlook calendaring and Excel macros and Sharepoint collab. The price of rebuilding the whole environment is simply too high for most businesses to consider. If you're unhappy with your Oracle licensing charges, you probably have to suck it up and deal with it. SQL is a good technology but a lousy standard, offering near-zero interoperability; the cost of re-tooling your apps so they'll run on someone else's database is probably unthinkable. Like they say, you date your systems vendor but you marry Larry Ellison.
Gary Edwards

Will Intel let Jen-Hsun Huang spread graphics beyond PCs? » VentureBeat - 0 views

venturebeat.com/...-to-spread-graphics-beyond-pcs

gpu nvidia jen-hsun-huang graphics ion tegra

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Feb 09
     
    Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang is on a mission to get graphics chips into everything from handheld computers to smart phones. He expects, for instance, that low-cost Netbooks will become the norm and that gadgets will need to have battery life lasting for days. Holding up an Ion platform, which couples an Intel low-cost Atom processor with an Nvidia integrated graphics chip set, he said his company is looking to determine "what is the soul of the new PC." With Ion, Huang said he is prepared for the future of the computer industry. But first, he has to deal with Intel. Good interview. See interview with Charlie Rose! The Dance of the Sugarplum Documents is about the evolution of the Web document model from a text-typographical/calculation model to one that is visually rich with graphical media streams meshing into traditional text/calc. The thing is, this visual document model is being defined on the edge. The challenge to the traditional desktop document model is coming from the edge, primarily from the WebKit - Chrome - iPhone Community. Jen-Hsun argues on Charlie Rose that desktop computers featured processing power and applications designed to automate typewritter (wordprocessing) and calculator (spreadsheet) functions. The x86 CPU design reflects this orientation. He argues that we are now entering the age of visual computing. A GPU is capable of dramatic increases in processing power because the architecture is geared to the volumes of graphical information being processed. Let the CPU do the traditional stuff, and let the GPU race into the future with the visual processing. That a GPU architecture can scale in parallel is an enormous advantage. But Jen-Hsun does not see the need to try to replicate CPU tasks in a GPU. The best way forward in his opinion is to combine the two!!!
Gary Edwards

Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage | Backblaze Blog - 0 views

blog.backblaze.com/...w-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage

CAR-MLS-Cloud BackBlaze Cloud-Computing

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Sep 09
     
    Amazing must read!  BackBlaze offers unlimited cloud storage/backup for $5 per month.  Now they are releasing the "storage" aspect of their service as an open source design.  The discussion introducing the design is simple to read and follow - which in itself is an achievement.   They held back on open sourcing the BackBlaze Cloud software system, which is understandable.  But they do disclose a Debian Linux OS running Tomcat over Apache Server 5.4 with JFS and HTTPS access.  This is exciting stuff.  I hope the CAR MLS-Cloud guys take notice.  Intro: At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way-and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867. In this post, we'll share how to make one of these storage pods, and you're welcome to use this design. Our hope is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us. Evolving and lowering costs is critical to our continuing success at Backblaze.
Paul Merrell

What the Hack! 56 Suspected Hackers arrested in the UK | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ted-hackers-arrested-in-the-uk

UK hackers arrests

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The UK National Crime Agency arrested 56 suspected hackers, including one 23-year-old male who allegedly attempted to hack his way into the U.S.’ Department of Defense in 2014. Not attempting to minimize the potential risks of hacking but how much does cyber-crime actually cost, what are the risks and what about those who hack the data of billions of internet users per day to, allegedly, “keep all of us safe?”
  • Besides the 23-year-old who allegedly attempted to hack his way into the a U.S. Department of Defense site, the other detainees allegedly were members of the hacking collectives Lizard Squad and D33DS which are being accused of fraud, money laundering and Denial of Service and Distributed Denial of Service (DOS & DDOS) attacks.  D33DS stands accused of having stolen data of some 450,000 Yahoo users. The arrests followed the recent announcement about the so-called FREAK security vulnerability that was leaving thousands of SSL sites unprotected. The arrest of the 56 hackers in the UK was reported as the National Crime Agency’s way of “sending a clear message” to the hacker community.
  • The U.S. DoD’s cyber-security functioned, obviously. A recent article by Benjamin Dean entitled “Hard Evidence: How much is cybercrime really costing us” suggests that the money spent on cyber-security per year is disproportional to the harm that is being caused by cyber-crime. Dean, who is a Fellow for Internet Governance and Cyber-security at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University would conclude that: There are numerous competing budgetary priorities at any one time and limited funds to spend on meeting all these needs. How much money does it make sense to invest in bolstering cybersecurity, relative to the losses? …In the hysteria created in the wake of the hacks of 2014, we risk making the wrong choice simply because we don’t know what the current sums of money are being spent on.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Meanwhile, NSA whitleblower Edward Snowden (think about him what you want), would reveal that the NSA and the GCHQ hacked themselves into the possession of the encryption codes of the world’s largest SIM card manufacturer Gemalto. Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program wouldn’t come as a surprise to those who have known about the United States’ and allies mutual spying network Echelon for decades.
Gary Edwards

Is Linux dead for the desktop? - 1 views

www.cio.co.uk/...is-linux-dead-for-desktop

Linux-desktop wordSDK Office-365

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Linux never had the apps
  • Charles King, an IT analyst who follows enterprise trends, says the big change is in IT. At one time, executives in charge of computing services were mostly concerned with operating systems and applications for massive throng of traditional business users. Those users have now flocked to mobile computing devices, but they still have a Windows PC sitting on their desk.
  • Today, Microsoft's lock (on the desktop, anyway) remains secure, even in the face of Apple's surge," King says. "Ironically enough, though, the open source model remains alive and well but mostly in the development of new standards and development platforms."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • David Johnson
  • What corporate end users really need is familiarity, consistency and compatibility - something Apple, Microsoft and Google seem more adept at offering."
  • Can desktop Linux OS be saved? Johnson says the best example of how to save Linux OS is the Chrome OS, an all-in-one laptop and desktop offering available through major consumer electronics companies such as LG (with their Chromebase all-in-one) and the Samsung Chromebook 2
  • The problem is that Chrome OS and Android aren't the same as Linux OS on the desktop. It's a complete reinvention. There are few Windows-like productivity apps and no knowledge worker apps designed for keyboard and mouse.
  • All of experts agree - Windows won every battle for the business user.
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Oct 14
     
    "For executives in charge of desktop deployments in a large company, Linux OS was once hailed as a saviour for corporate end users. With incredibly low pricing - free, with fee-based support plans, for example - distributions such as Ubuntu Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise offered a "good enough" user interface, along with plenty of powerful apps and a rich browser. A few years ago, both Dell and HP jumped on the bandwagon; today, they still offer "developer" and "workstation" models that come pre-loaded with a Linux install. Plus, anyone who follows the Linux market knows that Google has reimagined Linux as a user-friendly tablet interface (the wildly popular Android OS) and a browser-only desktop variant (Chrome OS). Linux also shows up on countless connected home gadgets, fitness trackers, watches and other low-cost devices, mostly because OS costs are so low. The desktop computing OS for end users has failed to capture any attention lately, though. Al Gillen, the programme vice president for servers and system software at IDC, says the Linux OS as a computing platform for end users is at least comatose - and probably dead. Yes, it has reemerged on Android and other devices, but it has gone almost completely silent as a competitor to Windows for mass deployment. As they say, you can hear the crickets chirping."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Linux Practicality vs Activism - Datamation - 0 views

www.datamation.com/...-practicality-vs-activism.html

Linux Practicality vs Activism coexistence #GetTheThingsDone #TheOpenSourceWayfree software -> open source mindset

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 03 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 03 Jul 16
     
    " ...For some, the freedom enjoyed by using Linux is the freedom from vendor lock-in or high software costs. Most would call this a practical consideration. Others users would tell you the freedom they enjoy is software freedom. This means embracing Linux distributions that support the Free Software Movement, avoiding proprietary software completely and all things related. In this article, I'll walk you through some of the differences between these two freedoms and how they affect Linux usage. ...."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 03 Jul 16
     
    " ...For some, the freedom enjoyed by using Linux is the freedom from vendor lock-in or high software costs. Most would call this a practical consideration. Others users would tell you the freedom they enjoy is software freedom. This means embracing Linux distributions that support the Free Software Movement, avoiding proprietary software completely and all things related. In this article, I'll walk you through some of the differences between these two freedoms and how they affect Linux usage. ...."
Gary Edwards

Readium at the London Book Fair 2014: Open Source for an Open Publishing Ecosystem: Rea... - 0 views

www.publishersweekly.com/...tem-readium-org-turns-one.html

Readium ePUB OpenWeb-Productivity-Platform HTML5

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 14
     
    excerpt/intro: Last month marked the one-year anniversary of the formation of the Readium Foundation (Readium.org), an independent nonprofit launched in March 2013 with the objective of developing commercial-grade open source publishing technology software. The overall goal of Readium.org is to accelerate adoption of ePub 3, HTML5, and the Open Web Platform by the digital publishing industry to help realize the full potential of open-standards-based interoperability. More specifically, the aim is to raise the bar for ePub 3 support across the industry so that ePub maintains its position as the standard distribution format for e-books and expands its reach to include other types of digital publications. In its first year, the Readium consortium added 15 organizations to its membership, including Adobe, Google, IBM, Ingram, KERIS (S. Korea Education Ministry), and the New York Public Library. The membership now boasts publishers, retailers, distributors and technology companies from around the world, including organizations based in France, Germany, Norway, U.S., Canada, China, Korea, and Japan. In addition, in February 2014 the first Readium.org board was elected by the membership and the first three projects being developed by members and other contributors are all nearing "1.0" status. The first project, Readium SDK, is a rendering "engine" enabling native apps to support ePub 3. Readium SDK is available on four platforms-Android, iOS, OS/X, and Windows- and the first product incorporating Readium SDK (by ACCESS Japan) was announced last October. Readium SDK is designed to be DRM-agnostic, and vendors Adobe and Sony have publicized plans to integrate their respective DRM solutions with Readium SDK. A second effort, Readium JS, is a pure JavaScript ePub 3 implementation, with configurations now available for cloud based deployment of ePub files, as well as Readium for Chrome, the successor to the original Readium Chrome extension developed by IDPF as the
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 14
     
    excerpt/intro: Last month marked the one-year anniversary of the formation of the Readium Foundation (Readium.org), an independent nonprofit launched in March 2013 with the objective of developing commercial-grade open source publishing technology software. The overall goal of Readium.org is to accelerate adoption of ePub 3, HTML5, and the Open Web Platform by the digital publishing industry to help realize the full potential of open-standards-based interoperability. More specifically, the aim is to raise the bar for ePub 3 support across the industry so that ePub maintains its position as the standard distribution format for e-books and expands its reach to include other types of digital publications. In its first year, the Readium consortium added 15 organizations to its membership, including Adobe, Google, IBM, Ingram, KERIS (S. Korea Education Ministry), and the New York Public Library. The membership now boasts publishers, retailers, distributors and technology companies from around the world, including organizations based in France, Germany, Norway, U.S., Canada, China, Korea, and Japan. In addition, in February 2014 the first Readium.org board was elected by the membership and the first three projects being developed by members and other contributors are all nearing "1.0" status. The first project, Readium SDK, is a rendering "engine" enabling native apps to support ePub 3. Readium SDK is available on four platforms-Android, iOS, OS/X, and Windows- and the first product incorporating Readium SDK (by ACCESS Japan) was announced last October. Readium SDK is designed to be DRM-agnostic, and vendors Adobe and Sony have publicized plans to integrate their respective DRM solutions with Readium SDK. A second effort, Readium JS, is a pure JavaScript ePub 3 implementation, with configurations now available for cloud based deployment of ePub files, as well as Readium for Chrome, the successor to the original Readium Chrome extension developed by IDPF as the
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Patent Litigation Cost US Business About A Trillion Dollars In A Quarter Century, Outwe... - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...ury-outweighing-benefits.shtml

patent litigation cost business more than benefits time new

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 Apr 14
     
    "from the trolls-strike-again dept Techdirt recently wrote about the ever-growing flood of patents being granted by the USPTO. As we've emphasized, more patents do not mean more innovation; nor do they necessarily lead to greater overall benefits for business."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 Apr 14
     
    "from the trolls-strike-again dept Techdirt recently wrote about the ever-growing flood of patents being granted by the USPTO. As we've emphasized, more patents do not mean more innovation; nor do they necessarily lead to greater overall benefits for business."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Get what you paid for with open source | Opensource.com - 0 views

opensource.com/...get-what-you-paid-open-source

open source pay get paid free gratis collaboration pays fee

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 Jun 14
     
    "The other day I heard the phrase every open source educator hates to hear: "Well, you get what you pay for..." So, this time in my talk to the group, instead of explaining that 'free' means 'free as in freedom' not 'free of cost', I changed it up. I replied, "You're right you do.""
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 Jun 14
     
    "The other day I heard the phrase every open source educator hates to hear: "Well, you get what you pay for..." So, this time in my talk to the group, instead of explaining that 'free' means 'free as in freedom' not 'free of cost', I changed it up. I replied, "You're right you do.""
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Studies on file sharing - La Quadrature du Net - 0 views

wiki.laquadrature.net/Studies_on_file_sharing

studies file sharing Quadrature du Net

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 11 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 11 Aug 15
     
    "Contents 1 Studies 1.1 Evaluation of the effects of the HADOPI law 1.1.1 University of Delaware and Université de Rennes - 2014 - Graduated Response Policy and the Behavior of Digital Pirates: Evidence from the French Three-Strike (Hadopi) Law 1.1.2 M@rsouin - 2010 - Evaluation of the effects of the HADOPI law (FR) 1.2 People who share files are people who spend the more for culture 1.2.1 Munich School of Management and Copenhagen Business School - Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload 1.2.2 The American Assembly (Collumbia University) - Copy Culture in the USA and Germany 1.2.3 GFK (Society for Consumer Research) - Disappointed commissioner suppresses study showing pirates are cinema's best consumers 1.2.4 HADOPI - 2011 - January 2011 study on online cultural practices (FR) 1.2.5 University of Amsterdam - 2010 - Economic and cultural effects of unlawful file sharing 1.2.6 BBC - 2009 - "Pirates" spend more on music (FR) 1.2.7 IPSOS Germany - 2009 - Filesharers are better "consumers" of culture (FR) 1.2.8 Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc. - 2009 - P2P / Best consumers for Hollywood (EN) 1.2.9 Business School of Norway - 2009 - Those who share music spend ten times more money on music (NO) 1.2.10 Annelies Huygen, et al. (Dutch government investigation) - 2009 - Ups and downs - Economische en culturele gevolgen van file sharing voor muziek, film en games 1.2.11 M@rsouin - 2008 - P2P / buy more DVDs (FR) 1.2.12 Canadian Department of Industry - 2007 - P2P / achètent plus de musique (FR) 1.2.13 Felix Oberholzer-Gee (above) and Koleman Strumpf - 2004 -File sharing may boost CD sales 1.3 Economical effects of filesharing 1.3.1 University of Kansas School of Business - Using Markets to Measure the Impact of File Sharing o
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 11 Aug 15
     
    "Contents 1 Studies 1.1 Evaluation of the effects of the HADOPI law 1.1.1 University of Delaware and Université de Rennes - 2014 - Graduated Response Policy and the Behavior of Digital Pirates: Evidence from the French Three-Strike (Hadopi) Law 1.1.2 M@rsouin - 2010 - Evaluation of the effects of the HADOPI law (FR) 1.2 People who share files are people who spend the more for culture 1.2.1 Munich School of Management and Copenhagen Business School - Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload 1.2.2 The American Assembly (Collumbia University) - Copy Culture in the USA and Germany 1.2.3 GFK (Society for Consumer Research) - Disappointed commissioner suppresses study showing pirates are cinema's best consumers 1.2.4 HADOPI - 2011 - January 2011 study on online cultural practices (FR) 1.2.5 University of Amsterdam - 2010 - Economic and cultural effects of unlawful file sharing 1.2.6 BBC - 2009 - "Pirates" spend more on music (FR) 1.2.7 IPSOS Germany - 2009 - Filesharers are better "consumers" of culture (FR) 1.2.8 Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc. - 2009 - P2P / Best consumers for Hollywood (EN) 1.2.9 Business School of Norway - 2009 - Those who share music spend ten times more money on music (NO) 1.2.10 Annelies Huygen, et al. (Dutch government investigation) - 2009 - Ups and downs - Economische en culturele gevolgen van file sharing voor muziek, film en games 1.2.11 M@rsouin - 2008 - P2P / buy more DVDs (FR) 1.2.12 Canadian Department of Industry - 2007 - P2P / achètent plus de musique (FR) 1.2.13 Felix Oberholzer-Gee (above) and Koleman Strumpf - 2004 -File sharing may boost CD sales 1.3 Economical effects of filesharing 1.3.1 University of Kansas School of Business - Using Markets to Measure the Impact of File Sharing o
Gary Edwards

EU Stumbles On Buying Microsoft Alternatives -- Micosoft -- InformationWeek - 0 views

www.informationweek.com/...showArticle.jhtml

eu kroes microsoft opensource openstandards

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 08 - Cached
  • Ellinides said in an interview arranged by a spokeswoman for Commissioner Siim Callas, who oversees procurement, that studies showed the costs of moving to open source outweighed the benefits. He said it may be time for a new study.
  • "For the moment we are working in a Microsoft environment," said Christos Ellinides, director of corporate IT solutions and services, who recommends software for the Commission.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 08
     
    This is too funny. While Neelie Kroes is banging the open source - open standards drum, the head of the EU Commissions IT dept is buying Microsoft! The money quote: "Ellinides said in an interview arranged by a spokeswoman for Commissioner Siim Callas, who oversees procurement, that studies showed the costs of moving to open source outweighed the benefits. He said it may be time for a new study.
  • anonymous on 28 Sep 13
     
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